I saw Friday’s keynote at LCA2008, which was titled Two Snake Enter, One Snake Leave?, and given by Anthony Baxter.
It was a good talk — Anthony was talking about the upcoming Python 3.0, which is a backwards-incompatible refresh of the Python language. It is being tweaked in a backwards-incompatible way in order to freshen up the language, which was gaining 15 years worth of cruft. I only wish PHP were doing the same.
Now, I wasn’t unhappy with the talk. It was just that it shouldn’t have been a keynote. The talk was not too technical, but it was really only relevant to Python developers attending the conference. I think the talk should have been a normal talk, not a keynote, so those that aren’t developing Python applications could have gone and seen something more relevant to them.
The other two keynotes, Reconceptualizing Security and Would you do it again for free? both had psychological and philosophical themes that were relevant to everyone in the audience. No matter whether you were a Linux user, kernel hacker, gamer, etc., you could still benefit from seeing those keynotes. But the Python one? Not really relevant unless you are a Python programmer.
Nothing against the talk itself — just it was in the wrong category.
A couple of years back was a Perl 6 keynote, which in my opinion was much more gratuitously pro-Perl than this year’s was pro-Python.
I’m not anti-Python — I had nothing against it being pro-Python — it’s just that it shouldn’t have been a keynote at a conference where the audience was so diverse.